Day: March 6, 2012

By: Edda Zekarias

David Hyerle Ed.D, Thinking Schools International Co-Director met with Ato Dilamo Otore, Head of the Addis Ababa Education Bureau. In the discussions, levels of implementation were greatly highlighted at the end of which strategies were crafted. Explained, the strategy will start with training experts from AAEB itself along with the ten sub-city leadership. Following, school leadership /principals etc/ will take awareness creation training after which the implementation of the program in the pilot schools will be on a strong foundation. The highlight of the meeting was an agreement for Eminence SE to host a half-day workshop this coming Thursday, March 7^th 2012 in which senior delegates from the bureau and the sub-city leadership will be attending. In the discussion, Ato Tesfaye Alemu, CEO of Eminence Social Entrepreneurs and Bereket Aweke coordinator of Thinking Schools Ethiopia were present.

By: Edda Zekarias

‘Thinking, network, creativity’ and ‘improve problem solving’ were some of the terms that Dr. Hyerle used to brief Eminence staff on the concept of Thinking Schools International /TSI/ and what has been achieved and could be expected once implemented. In the briefing, he said that TSI was a result of experiences in the 1980s US educational revolution which initiated a wave of thinking pattern necessities that eventually changed schooling systems. As more refining came about, thinking was infiltrated into schools and organizations focused on creative and productive skills development and so forth.  He shared some success stories from projects in Malaysia and South Africa where support for Thinking Schools approach has been overwhelming and greatly encouraging.

Thinking Schools coming to Ethiopia through Eminence was also noted as a good collaboration between TSI and Eminence. He noted the benefits of having a comprehensive company as Eminence would facilitate the process mentioning the training and media department engagements in the areas of product development /publications, videos, software development, etc/ to assist with the program. Not only limited to the schooling environment, he added that Thinking Schools approach has been used in huge corporations and businesses and could have like potential in Ethiopia and beyond.